How did human language "evolve from non-human"?

Correspondence of Hans Georg Lundahl: Tomasello Not Answering · New blog on the kid: How did human language "evolve from non-human"? · Assorted retorts from yahoo boards and elsewhere: Adam Reisman's Response, Mr. Flibble's Debate · Andrew Winkler's Response and Debate · Creation vs. Evolution: Odd Perfect Numbers? Less Impossible than Abiogenesis or Evolutionary Origin of Human Language!

I'll share a few answers from quora. I'll quote each that I share and then comment.

But first a little intro. In the military, I was a private radio operator, in contact with telegraph operators, under a common command. Part of the things we were taught was communicating certain commands quickly and secretly. I can't guarantee the example I give is accurate, indeed I hope it isn't. "A01" would be equivalent to "turn right" (I sincerely hope "A01" means something different, and "turn right" has a different code, so I gave no secret away, I have forgotten all the details).

There is nothing specially "turn" about "A" and there is nothing "right" as opposed to left or back or straight on about "01" — it's just a code. This is precisely how phonemes function in relation to a morpheme.

The other side of this experience is, the code was very limited. An upper case letter. A two digit number. We have 28 letters, so it's 2800 max, but there were in reality far fewer. Ape communications have a repertoir of far fewer.

How was the creator of the first language able to explain this concept and be understood and make others come to a consensus?

But the most likely answer is that language simply evolved. If we look at the behavior of other species, we will see that they all have methods of communicating with each other. Some have larger “vocabularies” than others, with a combination of vocalizations and physical cues. Cats have up to 21 different vocalizations, and a number of cues such as flattened ears, swishing tail, crouching, etc. to signal their intents and state of mind. Great blue whales have a “vocabulary” so sophisticated that we are still unraveling it. Recently it was discovered that whales call one another by “name.”

Vocabularies of up to 500 + possibly names = what I consider non-human animals, i e beasts, capable of.

Cuthbert Chisholm has done a great job of explicitating the problem, and is very far from providing any solution.

We don’t know, we weren’t there.

Why isn't that stopping the guys who reconstruct Proto-Indo-European? Well, even if they cannot really test that their model is the right one, at least they have a model and it would work, given the amount of time they think elapsed from PIE to the Proto-Languages of the Branches, and from then to the earliest attested written forms.

Why is it stopping people from this question? Because they cannot find even a workable model, irrespectively of whether it's testable or not. Thank you Cuthbert, much obliged! Now for Joe Devney:

How was the creator of the first language able to explain this concept and be understood and make others come to a consensus?

The best explanation I have found for the origin of language is a genetic change gave our distant ancestors’ brains a new skill that allowed them to think in more complex ways. They could imagine things within things within things. I think that would help them carry out more complex tasks, or plan and execute more complex projects.

Language was just one implementation of this new mental skill.

The problem with this is, language is key to actually getting the skill here set out. We don't see feral children, who learned communicating with wolves or apes instead of learning a human language, exercise this skill.

The genetic change or the anatomic change (minimally a human version of FOXP2 and the areas called after Broca and Wernicke) only give a potential for the skill, it needs to be brought out, which is first achieved by language.

But as to your question, we have models of what happened next. Language is created by a community, not by an individual. And it was likely a community’s children that actually came up with a full-fledged language that everyone could use.

This is even wrong in socio-linguistics. What Joe Devney means is that language changes are adopted by communities, not individuals. Esperanto was created by Zamenhoff, and since then some Esperanto-speaking communities have changed it, and it exists in several dialects. But the socio-linguistic process by which a dialect ceases to end infinitives in -en (the dialect from which Modern English arose after Middle English), or by which it changes an apical R into an uvular R, while they always involve communities adopting the change, they always start by at least one individual starting it. There was a first person who wore "elephant feet trousers" in the Hippie era. There was a first person who dropped -en in "thinken" so that the cognate of "denken" is now "think" ...

The problem is, such a process always happens inside an already existing language. It already has vocalisations serving not as direct expressions of a state of mind or of an imperative, but as ciphers which only in combination express concepts which only in further combination express a thought (and any number of thoughts, not just a state of mind, or an imperative).

Keep in mind that “communication” and “language” don’t mean the same thing.

Precisely what I do.

Before there was language, our ancestors had some way to communicate with each other. (I won’t speculate on what that miight have been.)

On the evolutionary view, our pretended ancestors would once upon a time have had communications like those of the beasts. A number of vocalisations and gestural expressions adding up to perhaps 500 max imperatives and mood expressions — what you could approximate if you combined traffic signs with emoticons.

Language would be a new method for communicating, one that had advantages over whatever methods were being used already.

And that's the big difference for how changes within languages work.

They don't introduce a new method, they change a detail in the old method.

The new method, IF it could be introduced, would certainly have advantages over the old ones. The problem is introducing it. If a humming bird had to survive over an ocean, it would be advantaged if it could adopt the gliding flight of an albatross, and diving for food. The result of this is not that you can turn a humming bird into an albatross by forcing them to cross oceans, the result is that it would drown.

Language is created by a community, not by an individual. And it was likely a community’s children that actually came up with a full-fledged language that everyone could use. ... The most instructive model is Nicaraguan Sign Language. This language appeared when formerly isolated deaf children were brought together in a school for them (and a second school soon after) in the late 1970s. The children had been able to communicate with their family members using gestures—not a real language.

I don't think this is an accurate way of describing it. On some level, gestures within the family were a real, if limited, language. The bringing them together helped them enrich it, but did not create it from scratch.

Probably something like a pidgin. But as has happened with other pidgins, once the younger children get hold of it—when it becomes their first language—they turn it into a proper language, with grammatical elements like case and plural markers.

Oh boy, while Chomsky has some merits (like in defining what a language is), he has his limits. His imaginary origin history of creoles is one of them. It was debunked by John Hamilton McWhorter V in his The Missing Spanish Creoles: Recovering the Birth of Plantation Contact Languages. The traits of Creoles that are common between Saramaccan, Jamaican Patois, Papamiento, Cape Verdean Creole, Haitian are not the traits a grammarless pidgin assumes when acquiring grammar, they are traits that West African languages have.

How was the creator of the first language able to explain this concept and be understood and make others come to a consensus?

The creator of the first language was the first one to repeat a sequence of sounds while intending them to represent a specific concept. So if he or she said “Byah!” to mean “give,” and then said it again, that was the first word. He or she probably used hand gestures to make it clear, as in “Byah me some food, like I’m showing you!” Then he or she downed the half-cooked venison, never realizing that culture had just been invented.

Thank you for writing great fantasy, Ari Hoptman! Here is what Joe Devney (the one previously quoted) had to say about that:

The scenario you imagine never happened. No one person got the idea of language and had to explain it to his fellows. The problem you are asking about didn’t arise.

Thank you Joe Devney, I totally agree!

Ari Hoptman, make a novel about that, and join the ranks of Baron Münchhausen! You just made about as much sense, practically speaking, as Münchhausen pulling his powdered ponytail upwards, himself and his horse with it.

The problem with Münchhausen's scenario is, gravity. Lack of leverage. The problem with yours is, "give" is one of the imperatives all beast kinds, at least the gregarious species, have. Not in a sound sequence, but in a sound or gesture. Why would anyone complicate that with a sound sequence?

How was the creator of the first language able to explain this concept and be understood and make others come to a consensus?

We know absolutely nothing about the origin of human language, but it doesn’t seem likely that it started with one individual “creator”.

Adam Reisman was very wise in refraining from even trying to give an answer. As a B.A. in Linguistics, University of Southern California, he knows there isn't one. Thanks you!

How was the creator of the first language able to explain this concept and be understood and make others come to a consensus?

I doubt there was a creator of the first language. There had to already be enough words available to discuss abstract concepts, like languages. I think the development of language was organic, evolving over many generations. Hand signs slowly got replaced by vocalizations. Some utterances stuck and were repeated and shared, some weren’t.

Jim Ashby by contrast isn't anything like a linguist. Hence he made such a delightfully attackable statement!

There had to already be enough words available to discuss abstract concepts,

Well, how did these come about?

I think the development of language was organic, evolving over many generations.

Why would replacing unitary vocalisations for unitary imperatives and emotion expressions with a complex three tier system happen slowly? Or quickly? Why would it happen at all?

Hand signs slowly got replaced by vocalizations.

The problem isn't the hand sign vs vocalisation. The problem is:

• replacing unitary expression with a division of statements into concepts (Phrase = Morpheme + Morpheme + ...)
• replacing direct expression with arbitrary convention (in vocalisations this means replacing Phrase = Phoneme with previous + Morpheme = Phoneme + Phoneme + ...)

If you replace a hand gesture, like putting your flat hand to the lips and smacking with a vocalisation like "meeowwww!" to show you are content, you have still basically a sound expressing a phrase. Before "meeow" can be analysed as phonemes M + (i)Y + OW, you need to have "neeow" and "moo-eye" and "tee-ow" and "too-ow" and "too-ye" mean different unrelated things. And "I'm content" precisely as "give that" is anyway a thing that animals usually can express. Remember the parallel with traffic signs and emoticons? You need a circle, two eyes, and a mouth with lips turned upwards, you have the emoticon for "I'm content" ...

Some utterances stuck and were repeated and shared, some weren’t.

As said, as long as an utterance is on the level of one vocalisation = an imperative (traffic sign) or one vocalisation = a mood expression (emoticon), you have come no further at all.

Thank you very much, Jim Ashby!

How was the creator of the first language able to explain this concept and be understood and make others come to a consensus?

There seems to be an assumption here that someone thought of a language to begin with and then introduced it.

Not only "thought of a language" but even thought of it before he had a human language to help him even express thoughts to himself.

If you have two languages, like young Tolkien had English as native and French as foreign language at a given time, and so had a few of his close relatives, you can pretty easily think of a third language. Hence Animalic and Nevbosh.

But feral children usually don't show that kind of talent as conlangers.

This strikes me as very strange because language is first a form of communication and usually is invented as you go with other people.

In fact, it is usually more recieved than invented.

I have ways of communicating with animals who live near. I didn’t decide on the forms of communication and then set up a showcase, I slowly worked it out with the creatures concerned. I think this is how language usually forms.

Unless Bashan King is Doctor Doolittle, I suspect he means he learned to communicate as a cat or whatever, involving things that the cats around there would after some time translate as a "meeow" ...

Thank you Bashan King!

May I presume you never had to decipher a cat trying to say "don't give me milk for breakfast, doesn't agree with my stomach" ...?

How was the creator of the first language able to explain this concept and be understood and make others come to a consensus?

Language is closely tied to gesture. Humans by the age of two understand pointing. And everyone can teach their language by pointing and articulating a word.

Andrew Winkler is a Mathematician, not a Linguist.

The point of what situation he's pointing at is, an ape would NOT teach a young ape a word by pointing and articulating, an ape would simply teach her young or his young about the object starting by pointing at it.

He is again into the logic of "sound sequence" of "byah" for "give" ... in fact, ape language for "give me X" is arguably pointing at X.

All apes have a rudimentary collection of calls that differentiate between, say, snakes and leopards.

Two wrongs here.

• Not all apes, but vervets, which are not apes, but another kind of monkeys. As far as I know at least.
• They don't differentiate between snake and leopard. They differentiate between "run outwards away from each other!" (from the snake) and "climb into the trees!" (from the leopard). A vervet would not use either cry when simply seeing a leopard or a snake on a picture or TV if understanding himself and those around are perfectly safe.

But never mind. Here is how he used this:

A key piece of the puzzle is the fact that humans differ from all other apes in having a birth defect. This defect had the impact of improving articulation; it could have been a very sudden change. All apes have a rudimentary collection of calls that differentiate between, say, snakes and leopards. It’s possible that in a single generation the word stock expanded to thousands.

The problem here is, the only thing he means by "improving articulation" is improving the distinctness of sounds. The real problem (before one could get to "thousands of words") is replacing unitary vocalisations equivalents to imperatives and mood expressions (and sometimes composed vocalisations equivalent to names) with systematic double articulation. That means, each message is articulated into a diversity of morphemes each adding a concept into the overall notion, and each morpheme is articulated into a diversity of phonemes, functioning basically as mood neutral and non-imperative ciphers for the correct assignation by code of a specified morpheme.

Thank you very much, Andrew Winkler!

How was the creator of the first language able to explain this concept and be understood and make others come to a consensus?

Gwydion Madawc Williams is a "retired computer analyst and widely read on history and science" but it doesn't say on linguistics. It shows.

It is also possible that one small group worked out how to use language to say anything they might think, and this caused the sudden advance of Anatomically Modern Humans, who began to behave in more complex ways.

R i g h t ... or not.

• it's quite as simple as an appeal to direct act of God, but unlike this, it's about a process which is NOT simple, which means, unlike "God did it" (on proper occasion) it is really not explanatory at all;
• it's unclear why a group would be better equipped to do it than an individual.

here is a story about a child who was born deaf, and was older than the norm for speaking when they learned sign language. And they reported that their thinking suddenly became much clearer.

Reference needed. I don't see the link. If you mean the story of the Nicaraguan sign language, I think you got it wrong, just as I think Andrew Winkler got the three vervet danger cries wrong (the third being "duck under bushes!" — from the sight of birds of prey). If you meant anything else, you did not provide it.

Thank you, Gwydion Madawc Williams!

How was the creator of the first language able to explain this concept and be understood and make others come to a consensus?

The evolution of language likely occurred gradually over time, with early humans developing communication through gestures, sounds, and eventually more complex symbols.

Thanks, Eagle Gate!

The one and only reference to phonemes in morphemes, morphemes in phrases is "more complex symbols" and the only indication of the process is "eventually" instead of "suddenly" ....

And why would "early humans" be "developing" communication through gestures and sounds, when they would have already known that from their pre-human ancestors, if any? The question is how a humanity getting that from pre-human ancestors could ever get beyond that.

You have shown no solution at all.

And as I think there isn't one, I think that's very informative, and so I actually thank you, Eagle Gate.

How was the creator of the first language able to explain this concept and be understood and make others come to a consensus?

I wonder whether Julie Anderson got her answer from the spirits she consults?

In the hypothetical scenario of introducing the first language, effective communication and consensus-building would likely involve various strategies. ... While this scenario is speculative, the effectiveness of communication and the practical value of the language would play pivotal roles in gaining acceptance.

This is uninformative enough to be AI generated, though I don't think it is ... apart from the "various strategies" — let's look at each:

The creator might draw upon shared experiences, using analogies and metaphors to make the concept tangible and relatable.

The creator of a first language cannot communicate it with people not yet having one by that means, as analogies and metaphors only work in communicating with people who already have a language.

Practical demonstrations showcasing the language's utility would be crucial in gaining acceptance, emphasizing its practical benefits for cooperation or survival.

Ape like gestures and vocalisations already existed for that exact purpose.

Collaboration with others in developing or refining the language would foster a sense of community ownership.

Apes already had collaboration — about things that can be achieved with the equivalent of traffic signs and emoticons. And they had that collaboration by that equivalent.

Clear communication, cultural relevance, and aligning the language with existing norms and values would further contribute to the consensus-building process.

Excellent advice for sharing a conlang with people who already have a first language.

Less excellent for developing a first language and effectively sharing it with non-babies, before you die.

How was the creator of the first language able to explain this concept and be understood and make others come to a consensus?

In my opinion, the most important point about this matter is not “How was the creator of the first language…?” but “Who was the creator of the first language?”.

May I suggest God? Sorry for not adressing you, but I don't know how to pronounce 平岡 行雄.

Hans Georg Lundahl
Pompidolian Library, Paris
St. Catherine of Alexandria
25.XI.2023

Alexandriae sanctae Catharinae, Virginis et Martyris, quae, ob fidei Christianae confessionem, sub Maximino Imperatore, in carcerem trusa, et postmodum scorpionibus diutissime caesa, tandem capitis obtruncatione martyrium complevit. Ipsius corpus, in montem Sinai mirabiliter ab Angelis delatum, ibidem, frequenti Christianorum concursu, pia veneratione colitur.